The Penn's Grove record., 1887-07-16
MAGIC
How a Great Variety Of Dishes Is Con-
iured out OF a Few Ingredients.

The guests at nine-tenth5 OF the
cheaper restaurants and hotels IN tnls
or any other American city shOulu
abandon all fine scruples OF taste When
he enters their precincts. lie ma
sometimes be able to guess approx
mately at the nature of the ingredients
of the dishes set before him by the SEN
sations they produce on his palate. but
the probabilities are that W. could not
hit il c In q dozen shots. American
cooks have carried the culinary art IN
at least one direction to a greater de-
velopment than any other cooks IN tne
world, and gentlemen writing OF the
wonderful achievements Of modern CIV
ilization should not forget that fact.
1t used to be said of French cooks
that they were the best In the world,
because they could make ten different
kinds of soup out Of q nettle. The
hotel cook of to-day can discount that
performance. He can make not only
SOUPS, but fish rOasts, entrees, pastry
and desserts IN bewilderiGg variety out
of materials quite as unpromising.
If you will look over a bill OF fare Ia
any of these places you Will see four OF
FIVE kinds Of soups, three or four k1ads
Of fish, hair a dozen sorts of roast meat
game and poultry, made dishes and
entrees. No doubt you have noticed
that, and wondered how under the sun
a kitchen, with a range big enough to
cook and keep arm all these dishes
can possibly find space in less than a
half acre. Yet If you should order
every dish on the list you could get 1t,
or something that would answer for it,
and the kitchen where all these gatro-
nomic wonGers are turned out is not as
big as a kitchen in an average private
house either. Most wonderful OF all,
for all the countless variety of dishes of
the bill of fare there are not more than
a dozen dishes in the kitchen.
You see it is all in the carving and
the dishing. Here is a big boiler Of
clear soup. 1t IS made-never mind
how. You draw a big bowl out of it
and from a big pitcher by its side you
pour in a little %thickening, give 1t a stir
and there's your consomme. Into the
next bowl you fork a lot Of boiled mac
aroni, and there's your macaroni soup.
The next order is for vegetable soup;
you pitch In a lot of boiled vegetables
and there you are. BY having a few
other Ingredients handy you a get
muligatawney, or tail, chicken, tomato
or rice soup out of that same big boiler
filed from the stock barrel. How's
that for modern necTomancy
Well, the next thing on the bill of
fare is fish. There are two kinds,
baked and boiled. The first slice you
cut off is boiled cod, the next is had
dock, and the next is halibut, the next
is blue fish. In the next pan is a baked
fish. 1t has all the various capabilities
possessed by its boiled brother. When
the two fish swan in the sea they were
good, plain cod. With the aid Of a
little sauce they can be almost anything
in a restaurants.
Here is a piece Of roast mutton and
there q piece of roast beef. 1t is no
trick at all to transform them, with the
carving knife deity welded, INTO roast
lamb. roast rib or roast loin. With a
little delicate treatment it "a become
roast venison, roast bear OF any of the
other roasts on that wonderful bill of
fare. One cut off that fowl, there is
roast chicken; the next is roast turkey.
SlicIng the dark meat carefully makes
it pleasant. Adding fish oil after the
operation and throwing on plenty Of
jelly makes it duck. The veal becomes
rabbit, stewed chicken, lamb pie or
good honest veal, just as you please.
When the soup is thickened a good
deal and rice curry powder is thrown
in you have a very good curry. When
it is thickened a little and stewed Kid
neys are added you have the ever pop
ular kidney stew. The addition of
pieces fished out of the bottom of the
boiler with a sort Of oyster tongs VIII
make almost any kind of a stew of it.